culture

John Markey, OP, presents the lecture "Notes from the Road More Travelled: Doing Theology in a US Cultural Context." Fr. Markey proposes that, in the current century, U.S. theologians are faced with a mission to inculturate the Gospel and Christian Tradition in terms relatable to the cultural ethos of the United States, e.g. its unique patterns of thought, social structures, cultural narratives, and rituals. While Hispanics/Latin@s, African Americans, Asian Americans, feminists, etc.

The profound resonances between Mexican, Peruvian, and Filipino colonial experience may be appreciated by looking into the indigenous culture’s reception of the Christianizing process. Roman Catholicism, the Spanish imported religion, was successfully implanted by the Spanish missionaries who saw themselves as liberators ordained by God to wage spiritual battle against the devil’s stronghold on the pagan peoples.

What does it mean to be Catholic? Is it about loyalty to the pope? To bishops? To particular doctrines like Mary’s Immaculate Conception or Transubstantiation? While these things certainly are a part of Catholic faith, what this lecture will suggest is that being Catholic rests ultimately on something much more foundational. This is the principle of “sacramentality,” the conviction that what we know and experience in our everyday lives gives us a glimpse of what God is really like.

Presenting his lecture for the 10th annual Louis J. Luzbetak, S.V.D. lecture on mission and culture, Robert Schreiter, C.PP.S., Vatican II Professor of Theology at Catholic Theological Union focuses upon the peculiar intersection of Missiology. His attention here is directed toward intercultural interaction, inter-religious dialogue, and Missiology; both as an academic discipline and action of the church.